Friday, September 07, 2007

Going into rehab

I'm feeling like I just want to talk jibberish today.All that improving reading has taken its toll, I've overdosed and will need to go onto reducing amounts of contemporary fiction and then I'm going to have to check into rehab. I've had a place booked in the 19th century for several weeks and this has become an autumn tradition.
As surely as shortlist follows longlist so cometh the falling of the leaves, the burgeoning of the sloes and the departure of the swiftswallowhousemartins.They are our constant companions here and have reared their usual two little flocks in the verandah nests.They guard and protect their territory fiercely and even the cats have been too terrified to go out there. The day the birds leave always feels still and silent and makes me feel quite melancholy.But it also means that The X Factor is back, Strictly Come Dancing isn't far off and it's time to cast on and knit.I have been busy gathering supportive assistance for my retreat to the 19th century and wondering where to go this time round.Nothing stirs the mind like a stack of pristine books and my love of Oxford World's Classics remains undimmed from the set texts of Open
University days.I've grown attached
to the covers, the paper quality, the chronologies and the Select
Bibliographies which have set me off on many inspiring reading trails
over the years.Then there are the introductions.Sufficiently detailed
to challenge and allow for some new thinking (and always read after the book here) but not so far off into the academic stratosphere that
I can't understand them.I feel I know my way around an OWC, they are like old friends. I've been plucking a few off the shelves and I'm going to read them all with a bit of The Moral Imagination in mind because Gertrude Himmelfarb has certainly made her mark here.I expect in the annals of literary theory we're now in the phase of deconstructionist post-moral imagination because time moves on in a week, but this is an informative and readable book.So it's Bronte time.The Letters of Charlotte Bronte have been manna in amongst Booker madness and I'm going to have a reread of a Bronte that I haven't touched in years, Emily's Wuthering Heights plus Anne's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall which I've never read. Last year I read Agnes Grey for the first time.Then I must head for my annual By George read. George Eliot and I are firm friends but I still have some to read, last year Adam Bede and a re-read after forty years of Silas Marner. This year I hanker after Daniel Deronda and may squeeze in The Mill on the Floss if I'm up to it.I also have another tiny little treasure of a book from Oxford University Press which was my acupuncture treatment book of the week and is proving an excellent foundation for my rehab, more soon.That's a whole lot of reading with much potential for excess of initial enthusiasm leading to an eventual slump so I will spread it all over several months, because last year I got hyper-Gaskellitis over Christmas after too much Elizabeth so I must be careful.

Comments

Going into rehab

I'm feeling like I just want to talk jibberish today.All that improving reading has taken its toll, I've overdosed and will need to go onto reducing amounts of contemporary fiction and then I'm going to have to check into rehab. I've had a place booked in the 19th century for several weeks and this has become an autumn tradition.
As surely as shortlist follows longlist so cometh the falling of the leaves, the burgeoning of the sloes and the departure of the swiftswallowhousemartins.They are our constant companions here and have reared their usual two little flocks in the verandah nests.They guard and protect their territory fiercely and even the cats have been too terrified to go out there. The day the birds leave always feels still and silent and makes me feel quite melancholy.But it also means that The X Factor is back, Strictly Come Dancing isn't far off and it's time to cast on and knit.I have been busy gathering supportive assistance for my retreat to the 19th century and wondering where to go this time round.Nothing stirs the mind like a stack of pristine books and my love of Oxford World's Classics remains undimmed from the set texts of Open
University days.I've grown attached
to the covers, the paper quality, the chronologies and the Select
Bibliographies which have set me off on many inspiring reading trails
over the years.Then there are the introductions.Sufficiently detailed
to challenge and allow for some new thinking (and always read after the book here) but not so far off into the academic stratosphere that
I can't understand them.I feel I know my way around an OWC, they are like old friends. I've been plucking a few off the shelves and I'm going to read them all with a bit of The Moral Imagination in mind because Gertrude Himmelfarb has certainly made her mark here.I expect in the annals of literary theory we're now in the phase of deconstructionist post-moral imagination because time moves on in a week, but this is an informative and readable book.So it's Bronte time.The Letters of Charlotte Bronte have been manna in amongst Booker madness and I'm going to have a reread of a Bronte that I haven't touched in years, Emily's Wuthering Heights plus Anne's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall which I've never read. Last year I read Agnes Grey for the first time.Then I must head for my annual By George read. George Eliot and I are firm friends but I still have some to read, last year Adam Bede and a re-read after forty years of Silas Marner. This year I hanker after Daniel Deronda and may squeeze in The Mill on the Floss if I'm up to it.I also have another tiny little treasure of a book from Oxford University Press which was my acupuncture treatment book of the week and is proving an excellent foundation for my rehab, more soon.That's a whole lot of reading with much potential for excess of initial enthusiasm leading to an eventual slump so I will spread it all over several months, because last year I got hyper-Gaskellitis over Christmas after too much Elizabeth so I must be careful.

Constants...

Team Tolstoy

Team TolstoyA year-long shared read of War & Peace through the centenary year of Count Lyev Nikolayevich Tolstoy's death, starting on his birthday, September 9th 2010.
Everyone is welcome to board the troika and read along, meeting here on the 9th of every month to chat in comments about the book.

Team Tolstoy BookmarkDon't know your Bolkonskys from your Rostovs?
An aide memoire that can be niftily printed and laminated into a double-sided bookmark.

Port Eliot Festival

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